The explosion outside of his school. The vultures feasting on corpses in the streets. The water gushing into the boat that was ferrying him to safety.
The images of war remain with Kei Kamara to this day.
The LAFC striker pictures them whenever he shares the story of his childhood in Sierra Leone. He often sees them in his dreams.
“I get these nightmares,” Kamara said. “I’m always running. I’m always running from chaos.”
The memories continue to haunt the 39-year-old Kamara, but they also have convinced him of how fortunate he is.
So rather than be disenchanted with how he’s switched teams more than a dozen times in his career, he celebrates how someone has always wanted him.
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So instead of complaining about how he played irregularly last year with the Chicago Fire, he points out how his diminished role allowed him to score a milestone goal this year while playing for his hometown team.
“I’m this kid who ran away from a civil war,” Kamara. “I should not be here.”
Here, in his 19th year in professional soccer.
Here, with a resume that includes a stop in the English Premier League.
Here, in second place all-time in career goals in Major League Soccer, one spot ahead of Landon Donovan.
Kamara was living in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema when his mother won an immigration lottery that permitted her to move to the United States. He was left with an aunt, who was one of five wives in a polygamous family that included about three dozen children. Kamara considered them to be brothers and sisters, adding that he didn’t know what a cousin was at the time. They played soccer on the family compound’s courtyard or on the 6-foot-wide path between adjacent buildings on the property.
But their lives were about to be disrupted, as a civil war that broke out on the Liberian border moved into the cities.
Kamara was in school when he heard the explosion that changed everything. A grenade had detonated outside.
“I remember running out of school, running into this little alleyway,” he said. “Kids were falling down and we were jumping over each other. I’m getting close to home and I…